By popular demand :), here it is, my thoughts on blood elf porn MMORPGs. The USA is the world's biggest consumer and producer of porn, including blood elf porn. That might be due to the curious legal situation, because pornography is mostly legal in the USA, while prostitution is illegal in all states except for a few rural counties of Nevada. Thus paying a girl to have sex is only legal if a camera is running. The US sex industry is estimated to be $10 to $13 billion big, a lot bigger than the US MMORPG industry. So why aren't there more porn MMORPGs?

Most people think that the lack of sexual content in MMORPGs and video games outside Japan is to not hurt sales to mainstream customers. Big distributors like Walmart refuse to sell games rated "adults only". But is that argument really all that valid in the current world of digital distribution? Some people think video games are for children, while pornography is not, and therefore feel that porn and video games don't go together. I would say that most parents haven't realized the truth of the internet yet: If your boy can play World of Warcraft, he can also find explicit pornographic material on the internet. In fact, parents should be more worried if their teenage sons *can't* find porn on the internet, because then they are either completely retarded, or sexually not normal. The existence of blood elf porn games wouldn't change anything in the accessibility of pornography to children.

If you Google for "blood elf porn", you will find either drawings or films with real actors wearing fake elf ears. Other people on the internet already noticed that there is a distinctive lack of pornographic 3D software, although a Google search will find some "virtual sex" single-player "games". The few existing porn MMORPGs aren't very good, and there is only one commercially somewhat successful MMORPG with pornographic content. There is also Age of Conan, with its "mature" rating, but that basically only means naked boobs, the size of which you can modify with a slider in the character generator between "large" and "gigantic". Some people "roleplay" cyber-sex in other MMORPGs, but as avatars usually can't undress to less than their underwear, and there are no animated emotes supported by the games, that "cybering" is mostly in text form.

There are two possible explanations for the lack of virtual blood elf porn games: One is the uncanny valley hypothesis, which says that an animation which is almost, but not quite, human-like is more likely to cause revulsion in a human observer, basically looking like a zombie. But I think the other theory is more likely to be the culprit: It is a lot cheaper to pay a porn actress with fake elf ears than to create good enough 3D models with life-like animations. Well-animated MMORPGs cost many millions of dollars, and the ubiquity of free pornography on the internet makes it doubtful that a company could make a profit on a blood elf porn MMORPG. For a porn MMORPG to really be a huge success, it would need to tap into the power of multiplayer fun, for which there would need to be a sizeable female population. In reality the acronym for "porn MMORPG" would stand for Many Men Online Role-Playing as Girls.

On topic, I'd have to agree. There is no reason why I can ever imagine a porn/sex MMO taking off. I can't imagine very many regular MMO people would want to play a porn/sex MMO, knowing that they are basically cybering with other men. Even the sterotypical basement dweller has a shred of dignity.

And I can't imagine a casual MMO player wanting to pay for and play a porn/sex MMO. If they aren't serious about a game on its merits, I can't imagine they would be serious about a MMO based around porn/sex.

Usually porn is a 12 minute experience, sometimes accompanied by a little bit of shame afterward...I can't imagine people sitting around "playing" this type of MMO for very long, anyway.

Nice post Tobold, its an interesting concept, especially as im more in favour of more adult oriented games (not pornographic wise but concept wise)

I recall the press havung a field day with Mass Effect becuase you could seduce an alien and you saw her blue behind (Liara) - yet Heavy Rain comes along and not a smidgen of press - instead its acclaimed... talk about double standards.

However you put the text In reality the acronym for "porn MMORPG" would stand for Many Men Online Role-Playing as Girls.

However as you well know, my main on WoW was a FEMALE undead rogue, actually all my characters were female - my reason, if im gonna sit at a screen for hours on end may as well look at a pixellated female than a pixellated male - i have no desire to role play a female - although it did cause a few laughs between me and the missus when she played her mage.

How would your theoretical porn MMO work(ignoring the gender balance issue and assuming you have a roughly 50/50 player base)? Would the pornographic elements by tangential to the main gameplay? Then it would be a lot of work for a side system that many might just ignore. Would it be the centerpiece of the gameplay? Then, like n1ck said it would be a short lived 'play' experience most likely.

How do you go about connecting the concepts of pornography and community to keep people around?

All studies I have seen, done along the lines of the Kinsey report and what have you, have shown that the vast majority of the population are willing to admit to masturbating, with an additional amount of people unwilling to admit to it but still partaking. And that goes for both men and women.

While throwing around normative statements probably isn't the best way to go about it, let's be honest here, most people that masturbate have used pornography to do it at least some of the time, and your data point IS unusual if you don't fit into that when compared to society at large. Of course, I don't think Tobold, I, or anyone else attaches a stigma against people who do not use pornography.

@ Tobold

I would think that a pornographic MMORPG has some huge hurdles to overcome, if it is even viable. It just isn't that well suited to the genre. The majority of people who would be interested in it probably already have no problems using text to...role play as it is.

However, I think discussion about pornographic video games at large is more interesting than just MMOs. Like you said, it seems that only Japan has the industry for it. You'd figure that, especially in this internet age where brick stores aren't the end all and be all with distribution that there would maybe be more programmers willing to test the waters, if you will.

I can agree that normal was probably a poor choice of words. But it gets kind of hard to describe something that is different from the majority because we seem to have so much negative stigma on so many of the terms. I guess that goes to show how social of a race we are, how much we value fitting in. But abnormal is bad, unusual is bad, hell even something as generic as "different" is wrong.

"the vast majority of the population are willing to admit to masturbating

Overall I agree... but to say you arn't sexually normal if you don't use porn"

The majority/perception of the majority sets "normal". I think you're looking too closely trying to get offended. He didn't say anything about it being bad or good. He just said it's not normal, which you yourself agreed was the case.

You're taking it out of context.

@Tobold:This definately ranks up there for one of your best posts ever. Not only did you troll GG (with class, i might add), you did it with a legit job. At first, i was surprised when i read the title. I was double surprised, when it wasn't a spoof article (Which you're all too fond of ;P )!

I guess I am somewhat sheltered, but the only game I know of that portrayed sexual intercourse was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with the hot coffee mod: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_minigame_controversy

I am not into 'modding' but I am sure my game has this, being received the day before it went on general release!

Why does everybody need to have sex in order to be "normal"? Just because we evolved (like most other creatures) to have a sex drive in order to reproduce it doesn't mean that we, as sentient beings, shouldn't have a higher calling.

These days, when homosexuality is becoming more accepted, it seems that sexual ambiguity or asexuality are still considered "not normal".

It's not good at all to have porn MMOs because I've seen how porn devolves on the net: it gets very brutal very fast. You are using tame examples. It will not stay that way.

I don't think a lot of people get that. The fetish subculture is entrenched and often turns nasty easily. If porn MMOs get normalized similar to how porn in general is, they'll branch into those subcultures quickly.

Brief summary: most male porn is visual; most female porn is written. More men will go to where the women are than women will go to where the men are. Therefore, a porn text MUD does make strange sense...

The porn industry has its own problems with copyright infringement and most countries are full of prudes, and besides there's the lack of attention span which is especially relevant to an MMO since in popular conception MMO = progression. But there's always torrents

I thought that was what most of the "quiet corners" of Silvermoon City were! Porn MMOs.

...ahem.

Really though, there's a TON of sex-games out there. I can't imagine why anyone would want to play an actual "Porn MMO", though. Porn is typically something you enjoy privately, or with someone else close to you (or who is just boinking you, whatever) - not something I'd want to share/interact with alongside the mouth-breathing public.